By Victor C. Agustin
Manila Standard Today
IT was the Supreme Court’s Third Division that dealt the P3-billion defeat to taipan Lucio Tan’s Philippine Airlines, so why would his counsel Estelito Mendoza still insist that the PAL case be re-tried by the same division instead of the Second Division?
Why not?
With all the five members of that division retired, there is a greater probability that the new Third Division, now chaired by Presbitero Velasco Jr., would issue a pro-Tan ruling than with the case staying with the Second Division headed by Antonio Carpio. Carpio, though, was reported he would inhibit himself on all cases dealing with PAL and the taipan.
Just last month, the Velasco division handed the taipan a much-needed victory in another labor case, this time involving the P25-million claim by the UE Employees Association against the Tan-controlled University of the East.
The pro-Tan decision was, incidentally, written by another (but unrelated) Mendoza, Justice Jose Mendoza, who was a former counsel for taipan John Gokongwei.
Velasco also has a history of going against his more senior colleagues in another case involving another Tan company, deciding in a 2008 dispute in favor of the Philippine National Bank against its Angeles City-based borrower, Deang Marketing Corp.
In that P26-million case, Velasco pleaded that PNB, much like PAL now, be given more time to argue and present more evidence. But Velasco was slapped down by the strongly-worded decision of then Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales that giving in to PNB’s fatal procedural lapses would be “to countenance the context of fibs and flaws” perpetrated by the bank’s unnamed lawyers.
The good news for the PAL crew is that Velasco, a former president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Capitol Jaycees, went along with the majority in another case involving another Tan airline, Airphil Express, when the justices upheld the formation of a labor union in the budget carrier, despite having supervisory officers as members.
But what should worry PAL’s flight crew more than the outsourcing of ground personnel is the belated realization, a game-changing lesson, that the airline management gleaned from the recent labor dispute.
As PAL president Jaime Bautista told ABS-CBN News Channel’s Coco Alcuaz, the domestic market “is really a low-cost market,” with the flag carrier now intent on shedding many of its provincial routes in favor of its budget sister to concentrate on full-service regional and international destinations.
If that is not fair warning, wait until Air Asia starts its regional and domestic flights in December.
Tan in another divestment mode
Taipan Lucio Tan has finally agreed to the wish of his balae, former PBCom chairman Enrique Luy, to monetize his investment in their joint venture Oceanic Bank, a San Francisco-based bank.
Tan counsel Ma. Cecilia Pesayco said the shares of Oceanic Holdings, the holding company that owns Oceanic Bank, would be placed in a trust that would subsequently be sold to “third parties” to facilitate, in the meantime, the long-delayed merger of Tan’s Allied Bank and Philippine National Bank.
The divestment is apparently real, since the nominated trustee, Walter Mix III, is a former commissioner of the California Department of Financial Institutions. In addition, the voting trust agreement will have to be approved by the US Federal Reserve Board.
Heard through the grapevine
Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has settled for lawyer Jonathan Flaminiano, son of Estrada counsel Jose Flaminiano, to represent herself in the new plunder case filed by the Aquino administration. The younger Flaminiano is a partner of Flaminiano Arroyo and Dueñas. Partner Arroyo is Laurence Arroyo, a nephew of Mike Arroyo.
(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; e-mail: cocktales_mst@yahoo.com)
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